“When you've done all you can, do just a little bit more. Any extra effort you make will draw immense leverage from all the ordinary efforts which have preceded it. That can be powerful and effective.” LittlesDoneMotivationBitsCan DoPowerfulEffortLittle BitDrawsOrdinaryExtrasImmenseExtra Effort Author:Ralph Marston
“I am an ordinary human being who is impelled to write poetry. ... I still do feel that a poet has a duty to words, and that words can do wonderful things, and it's too bad to just let them lie there without doing anything with and for them.” FeelsWritingHumansStillsLyingCan DoHuman BeingsWonderfulPoetDutyOrdinaryWonderful Things Author:Gwendolyn Brooks
“It can do truth no service to blind the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral teaching has been the work not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected the Christian faith.” KnowsMenHas BeensFactsChristianCan DoKnownMoralAtheismTeachingOrdinaryBlindValuablePositive AtheismPortionsRejectedAcquaintanceChristian Faith Author:John Stuart Mill
“[Ritual] dwells in an invisible reality and gives this reality a vocabulary, props, costume, gesture, scenery. Ritual makes things separate, sets them apart from ordinary affairs and thoughts. Rituals need not be solemn, but they are formalized, stylized, extraordinary, and artificial. In the name of ritual, we can do anything. We can do astonishing acts. In the end, ritual gives us assurance about the unification of things.” NeedsGivingEndsRealityNamesCan DoOrdinaryExtraordinaryAffairInvisibleRitualArtificialGesturesCostumesVocabularyAssuranceAstonishingSolemnPropsSceneryUnification Author:Barbara Myerhoff
“What a vindication of the belief that ordinary people can do extraordinary things, what a reminder of what Bobby Kennedy once said, about how small actions can be like pebbles being thrown into a still lake, and ripples of hope cascade outwards and change the world.” PeopleWorldSaidStillsActionBeliefCan DoChangeOrdinaryExtraordinaryChanging The WorldThrownLakesOrdinary PeopleRemindersRipplePebblesExtraordinary ThingsVindicationCascadeSmall ActionsBobby Kennedy Author:Barack Obama
“The average ordinary citizen can do a lot of different things when it comes to the climate crisis.” DifferentCan DoCitizensOrdinaryCrisisClimateAverageDifferent ThingsOrdinary Citizens Author:Lawrence Bender
“Music can be a distraction and an escape. Sometimes a welcome escape. You need it. But music can also serve a very important social function because music can do things that mere prose, mere ordinary political agitation can't do.” NeedsImportantSometimesPoliticalSocialCan DoOrdinaryFunctionMereWelcomeProseDistractionAgitation Author:Howard Zinn
“The extraordinarily facile and in literary terms long lived works tend to be about ordinary people. Even Sappho writes about the utterly insignificant . What art can do is make the extraordinary more ordinary and ordinary more extraordinary.” PeopleWritingLongArtTermCan DoOrdinaryExtraordinaryInsignificantOrdinary PeopleLiterary Terms Author:Robert Dessaix
“Usually, ordinary histories don't get the emotional feel of a period. That's what a novel can do.” FeelsCan DoNovelEmotionalPeriodsOrdinary Author:Alix Kates Shulman